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Lysistrata Haranguing the Athenian Women
Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent, born 1872 - died 1898 - Enlarge image
Lysistrata Haranguing the Athenian Women
- Object:
Print
- Place of origin:
London, England (made)
- Date:
ca. 1929 (printed and published)
- Artist/Maker:
Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent, born 1872 - died 1898 (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Collotype print on paper
- Credit Line:
Given by Mr Vyvyan Holland
- Museum number:
E.749-1945
- Gallery location:
Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E, case I, shelf 50, box D
Aubrey Beardsley's distinctive black and white drawings for Oscar Wilde's Salomé, published in 1894, brought him an extraordinary notoriety whilst still in his early twenties. His work for the periodical The Yellow Book confirmed his position as the most innovative illustrator of the day, but as a result of the hostile moralistic outcry that followed the arrest and trial of Oscar Wilde in early 1895, John Lane and other publishers panicked and dropped Beardsley. Thereafter, almost the only publisher who would use his drawings was Leonard Smithers. Smithers was a brilliant but shady character who operated on the fringes of the rare book trade, issuing small, clandestine editions of risqué books. Smithers encouraged Beardsley's already growing interest in French, Latin and Greek texts of this kind and commissioned drawings to illustrate the Satires of the late Roman poet Juvenal and, most famously, Aristophanes's bawdy satirical play Lysistrata.
The illustration depicts the key moment in the play at which Lysistrata exhorts the Athenian women to abstain from all sexual congress with their husbands until peace is declared between the Athenian men and the Lacedaemonians. The prospect of a sustained period of abstinence leads one of the women to make an overt sexual advance on another.
This print comes from the folio of reproductions made from Beardsley's original drawings and published in about 1929. Utilising the expensive collotype process, these prints are much closer to the originals than the earlier line-block prints of the 1896 edition of the book or the various, mostly very poor reproductions included in subsequent pirated printings.
